


Bloodstained Clothes

by greyvvardenfell



Series: ZevWarden Week 2020 [6]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25105009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell
Summary: To everyone's surprise, Reydis kissed Zevran first.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Brosca
Series: ZevWarden Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811920
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: ZevWarden Week 2020





	Bloodstained Clothes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ZevWarden Week 2020: Day 6

The world was blood and fire. Branches fell from the flaming mangroves on the edges of the clearing to sizzle out in the swamp water, spilling acrid smoke into the air. Great pools of red reflected the dying light.

And still, Flemeth fought.

Reydis hauled herself to her feet again. Her head swam as she adjusted to the new gravity; she’d spent more time knocked to the spongy ground than standing in this battle. Alistair swore loudly to her right, lunging out of the way of the dragon’s whip-quick tail. Behind her, Wynne coughed in a plume of cinders still hot enough to burn. And Zevran, to her left, flipped a strand of sweaty hair out of his line of sight, quick golden eyes searching for an opening in Flemeth’s defenses. The twin shortswords in his hands gleamed, catching slashes of the sunset through the trees.

A sharp pain in Reydis's side signaled that the last blow she’d absorbed hadn’t been as harmless as she thought, but the adrenaline coursing through her fended off the pain. A broken rib, she suspected. She’d landed hard on a half-buried stone. But she couldn't dwell on it now.

She hauled her greatsword up and barrelled forward, aiming for Flemeth’s chest. The great dragon that had once given such blunt advice to two baffled young Grey Wardens hissed at her and reared, striking out with vicious claws. Reydis barely dodged the swing and pivoted on her heel to slam the pommel of her sword into Flemeth’s elbow instead. With all her weight behind it, she hoped the blow would prove enough of a distraction for Alistair or Zevran to line up a better hit.

Instead, an ear-splitting roar of pain and rage, raining sparks and spittle, took her by the throat and shook her to her core. In a fleeting second of clarity, she thought she could feel the blood vessels in her eyes burst from the force of it. Reydis shrank into her armor and covered her head, unable to escape the wall of noise.

Flemeth’s tactics were admirable: luring her enemies close, taking minor blows to throw them off, biding her time until one of them could be removed from the board. _And what a way to go_ , Reydis thought as her feet left the ground and the terrible heat of the dragon’s mouth threatened to roast her in her cuirass. Each blackened, razor-edged tooth pricked at her even through the thick metal. She squirmed helplessly, hopelessly, a small voice warning her that even if she got loose now, she might not survive the fall. Too many rocks, too many weak spots in her melting plate. The melting plate seared her flesh, her hair, and she realized absently that she was screaming louder than she ever had before.

_Stone take me…_

Another voice joined hers through the ringing in her ears. A desperate cry, the song of loss and pain and the last slither of the hangman’s rope. She was falling, then, slowly, cradled by lyrium’s searching tendrils shaped into a cloud, a puff of wool, that guided her back to the earth from which she came.

Later, she would hear the explanation. Zevran had seen her dart in to strike and readied himself to follow. He had heard, in the wake of Flemeth’s cry, armor crush between narrow jaws as the dragon picked her up like a doll. And he had shouted her name before vaulting up a scaled shoulder and sinuous neck to plunge his weapons into Flemeth’s eyes from above. Smoke and sound masked the rest, but Wynne’s quick spellwork wove a net to catch her, laced with healing for her burns and bites.

Reydis saw only a blur of brown and blond in the corner of her eye. When she came to from the blink of unconsciousness, fed by her scream and hitting the ground again, she saw it once more. But this time it crystallized into Zevran’s face, streaked with blood and sweat and still the only thing that could make her smile in the smouldering ruin of swampland they’d created. He was terrified, she saw. Almost near tears. And unarmed, strangely, though she could’ve sworn he’d been fighting not a moment earlier. The pieces slowly rearranged themselves into a picture that made sense as she sat up: the dragon’s corpse, leaking steaming blood and brain matter and narrow rivers of liquified steel from its eye sockets, face frozen in a permanent snarl.

“You… you saved me,” she croaked, letting her gaze return to Zevran’s.

A gentle hand brushed singed hair from her forehead. “Yes.” There was no pride in the word, only relief.

All this time, they’d danced. The quick shared looks on the road, his flirting and her conflicted resistance, those same warm fingers sneaking under her shirt in the Temple of Sacred Ashes as he removed her armor, piece by piece by piece. His reassuring presence at her side, the sour worry whenever she went out without him, the squeeze of his hand in front of Cailan’s funeral pyre not days earlier…

Reydis kissed him. She took his face between her palms and pressed her lips to his, catching his startled breath and swallowing it down. A life for a life, though such exchanges had long gone unrecorded between them. It was beyond repayment now, and had been for longer than either of them cared to acknowledge. The sun’s last rays gleamed on his earrings before Reydis closed her eyes and leaned into him further. He moaned, she heard, then wrapped his arms around her, carefully cradling the back of her head and sliding his other hand along her flank across the twisted remnants of her platemail.

Had Wynne not cleared her throat as she approached to survey the damage, perhaps they would’ve stayed there forever, tasting each other in the fading dusk. As it was, Zevran grinned to feel her skin against his, and Reydis laughed, breathless.

“I knew this would happen,” he whispered, close to her ear.

“What does that mean?” she answered playfully.

“Oh, my dear Warden…” Zevran picked up her hands, meshing their fingers: leather and steel, brown skin and white. “I did not think I was being subtle.”


End file.
